Henry Green - Concluding

"You can't," she repeated, in a wail.

"We weren't talking about ourselves," he pointed out.

"He is me," she said.

"Then listen to this, Liz please, I beg."

She moved off to the door, watched the copper in its shed. Because she had not walked out right away he felt it was safe to continue, yet was so nervous he fell back on the voice of the sort of lecturer he was not, and which he did not often use when with her.

"Consider for a moment our whole position here," he said. "A complete community related in itself, its output being what is, of course, the unlimited demand for State Servants, fed by an inexhaustible supply of keen young girls. Staffed, as well, by men and women who are only too well aware they can be replaced almost at a stroke of the pen by the State, from which there is virtually no appeal. In fact, we have here a sad bevy of teachers lying wide open to be reinvigorated, as it would be called, by new blood of which, worse luck, there is only too plentiful a supply in the Pool."

Still with her back towards him she laughed.

"Darling, you do do it well," she said. He thought, anyway she seems to listen, and was encouraged to pursue the matter.

"It follows," he proceeded, "that for the present an equipoise can be claimed here. There are, naturally, individual tensions, what one might describe as instances of disintegration or even of centrifugal action, whereby certain appear, now and again, to be flung out into the periphery of outer darkness. In other words we do not always agree between ourselves. Nevertheless I claim that we have a general measure of contentment in spite of what are, no doubt, inherited differences of outlook. To sum up, we exist together to earn a living by teaching others how to gain theirs. By and large we go about it in peace, and so I claim that there is what I can call a condition, which is to say a self compensating mechanism, in, or of, equipoise."

He paused. He was about to lose the thread. She said no word.

"But an incautious movement towards the centre," he went on with an effort, "towards the shaft upon which our little world revolves, that is to say upon the State which employs us at our main function, that of spinning like tops on our own axis," and here he gave one of his cracked laughs to point the jest, "can only fracture the spinning golden bowl, the whole unit, and bring the lot to nought, in other words, reduce us to the lowest, the unemployable."

"What is it, dear?"

"He's worried about this cottage, Liz," Sebastian replied promptly, but in his own voice.

"If he's worried, then he only is about me. I do blame myself," she said.

"Oh no, he's not," he said. Then Birt lost control. "He's past the age," he rushed on. "Besides he's ending, dying on his feet, I tell you. More than ever capable of some incredible folly."

"Don't be absurd, please," she said, and walked out in the sun in a sweat, as if she had been dowsed with cold water. He followed.

"Why, you don't mean he could have been upstairs all the time?" he whispered.

"There you are," she said, then turned on him in the sharp light. "You're terrified of Gapa, you all are, every one of you, and quite right. He'll do what he thinks fit, so he should. They've been at you about our house, though I don't know exactly how or what, and I don't want, I wouldn't stoop so low."

"Justice," Sebastian began almost to shout. "Old men have no idea at their age. They're too old."

"But darling I'm sure I didn't say a word, even, about justice."

"Yes Liz, but that's the essence of what we're discussing, surely. He's got his teeth into some injustice he thinks they've done this student, he will talk too much with the children you understand, and he's out to make trouble. But the bad part is, don't you see, he'll do it in spite of our cottage."

"It's me he wants to protect, it's me he loves," she said, showing signs of great agitation which he was too excited to notice.

"Yes, yes, he is, and that's why, and. ." he answered in a jumble, but she burst into tears and hurled herself at him. She forced herself on his chest as he stood there, arms hard around his neck.

"Oh Seb darling, why do you frighten me so?" He clutched her, speechless.

"If you love me like you say you do?" she went on. He held her tight, as though to crush the fears out.

"Forget it," he said. "This girl's disappearance has bowled me over."

She relaxed a trifle in his arms.

"But you said yourself Gapa was too old, and had to be let do what he wanted."

He stiffened.

"Why, you don't mean he really has anything on with this Mary?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said. "You must be mad. At his age? Really."

"It's all very well, Liz," he said, and relaxed his hold. "They do, you know." Then he put on the lecturer's voice again. "There have been regrettable instances," he intoned. "We have only to recollect the Police Court cases in the old regime."

"Stop that, Seb. I won't have you go on like it about Gapa. He's worth the whole lot of them." But she gave him a Judas kiss on the mouth.

"I love you," he mumbled, against lips which were thin as grass. He drew back. "No," he said, "Baker's all right. It's Edge is the trouble."

"They have no men," she said of these spinsters.

He winced. He even squirmed. But she did not notice.

"Baker can, and will, listen to reason, but the guv'nor's a real terror," he brought out at last. He took her hand. They wandered over to the sty. "She'll stop at nothing. She'd a light in her eye at lunch which made me uneasy, I can tell you. And to say what she did into the bargain."

"All right then, what did she say?" Miss Rock asked in a tired, bored voice.

"Oh not in so many words," he answered. "But it would do no harm at all to watch most conscientiously. She'll fight."

"What about?"

"To win her own way, of course. D'you suppose he could ever be persuaded to accept this election if it comes?"

"So that you can take over the cottage?" she asked with extraordinary perspicacity in a small, languid voice, while she glanced at him.

"Hullo, what's this?" he said, halted in his tracks.

"You're not being open with me," she said, and did not meet his eyes.

He knew this was so, but could hardly admit it. He had also to bear in mind that she must be spared shocks.

"I am," he protested. "Darling, we've not kept things from each other, have we?"

"You must remember Gapa's everything, Seb."

"Everything, Liz?"

"Well, after all he's done, when he's worked his fingers to the bone, and his discoveries from the time he was young, I do think he's entitled to lead his own life from now, I mean we owe it to him, don't we, and if you loved me, darling, you'd see it that way too. I mean if he's good enough for the State, for them to let him and me live on here, then I don't see we've a right to tell him whatever it is might suit us at the moment."

"But darling, they will offer the election. The State will."

"Who said they would?"

"Miss Edge heard, Liz. When she was up in Town. This morning."

"You don't mean to say you've talked over Gapa again with that woman?"

"Of course not, dear. She just mentioned it at lunch."

"So that's what you've been at, then?" He stayed miserably silent.

"Don't let's mention them even, any more," she said, as though she had made up her mind this was all a stupid misunderstanding. She kissed his cheek. "Shall we go down to the Lake?" she said.

"Oh, not there, Liz, I'd want to bathe," he extemporised." They've put out an order against that on account of the weeds."

"All right, where? The beech tree?"

"Back to our private beech, Liz?" he agreed, nervously. She kissed him twice.

"Dear me," she said, very shy all of a sudden. "You have become loving." And they made off, hand in hand once more.